Images of deep space are serenely beautiful. So much so that it's easy to forget just how immensely violent and massive everything is out there. Over at the Bad Astronomy Blog, Phil Plait shares an incredible image of the Carina Nebula, a window into the heart of the Milky Way:

It's got it all: stars of every color studding a riotous background of gas, itself glowing red or reflecting blue, silhouetted in great ostentatious sweeps of dust. Shock waves riddle the gas, compressing it here and there in arc, loops, streamers, and filaments.

For some context, Plait points out that the bright star in the lower left corner, Eta Carina, nearly went supernova in 1843, but stabilized itself by pooping out two masses of matter—each about the size of our sun. Totally nuts. [Bad Astronomy Blog]